C is for C U Next Tuesday

Anyone that has ever had a friend who speaks another language or has traveled anywhere where English isn't the mother tongue will tell you that one of the first things you learn is how to curse.

Sandy and her friends were already very familiar with a lot of English profanity.  Words like bitch, ass, cock, shit and fuck were part of their standard vocabulary.  But, I was able to give them the gift of "cunt".

Cunt is quite possibly my favourite "dirty word".  It's effective, versatile and just so damn fun to say.  Personally, I only use it towards male friends (eg. "Craig, you're such a cunt!", "What a cunt you turned out to be!", "Whats up Cunty?") or when I think its funny (which is often). I also explained the brilliance of using "C-U-Next-Tuesday" when you're in a location where saying "cunt" would be frowned upon.  Sandy took a strong liking to the word and was dropping C-Bombs for the rest of the week.

In return, a plethora of German cussin' was bestowed upon me.

Asrchloch -> asshole

Schlampe -> bitch

Halts Maul -> shut the fuck up (loose translation)

Kartoffelnauser -> potato-nose (Germans are weird)

Fotze -> cunt!

Needless to say, I had some fun with those gems and I look forward to expanding my vulgar vocabulary of foreign filth as I continue my travels.

B is (also) for Berlin

In 1986 American new wave band Berlin perplexedly climbed to the top of the charts with the profoundly shitty, "Take My Breath Away". In 2008, the city of Berlin took MY breath away!

Sandy found us a lift to Berlin using a rideshare website (think, organized hitchhiking). We met three random dudes in a parking lot, then defied the laws of physics by piling 5 full-grown adults into a slightly-larger-than-soup-can sized red two-door and headed for the autobahn. At 170km per hour the soup-can began to shake violently, leaving random nuts and bolts behind us like a metallic trail of bread crumbs. At least if we got lost we'd be able to find our way home following the scraps.

The drive into Berlin was breathtaking. We passed so many beautiful buildings and stunning monuments as we cruised through the streets. After being dropped off in the middle of the city, we bade Auf Wiedersehen to our autobahn buddies and headed for the home of Sandy's best-friend Tina. When we arrived, it was Tina's boyfriend Axel that greeted us. That's right.... Axel. Wait, it gets better; his full name is AXEL WOLF! How badass is that?! He's like a character from Mortal Kombat... there's Johnny Cage, Liu Kang, Sonya Blade and Axel Wolf.

Tina wasn't home from work yet, but Axel invited us in and put on a pot of tea. We got comfortable in the living room, Sandy and Axel did some catching up, Axel and I got to know each other a little, and it wasn't long before Tina arrived and joined us. I can't explain to you how happy Sandy and Tina were to see each other. These girls are truly in love with each other. Sandy says they are soulmates and it's impossible to argue with. The last guest to arrive was a man known simply as "Becko". We all chatted a little more, but soon it was time to start thinking about dinner. Sandy informed me that Tina, Axel and Becko are incredible chefs. In fact, creating their own recipes, they were the winners of a German Food Network television show! But, could they top the Student Sauce I had enjoyed the night before?

On this occasion it was Mr. Wolf's time. Watching Axel in the kitchen was like watching a mad scientist at work. Flying around from station to station.... chopping, mixing, stirring, frying. He knew exactly what he was doing, never needing to consult a recipe. The culinary highlight for me was the flambé because I... love... fire. So, I was captivated when Axel poured some alcohol into the wok and lit that baby up, sending a huge flame into the air. I was so impressed, I asked him to do it again. During the encore flambé, Axel accidentally singed all the hair off of his right forearm... and an eye-brow.... and he was forced to wear an eye-patch for the next few weeks... which, I believe, perfectly suits a man named Axel Wolf. It made him even more badass.

We dined like Könige und Königinnen and the wine and beer flowed like a magical river that lowers your inhibitions. After dinner we took to the streets of Berlin to find ourselves a Kneipenmeile (bar mile). I sampled many pints of delicious German beer and many shots of burning Mexican liquor. A night out with Axel and Becko felt like a night out with old friends. As we stumbled home at the end of the night, arm in arm, we sang "I'm Yours" by Jason Mraz over and over.

The next morning, Sandy, Tina and I dragged ourselves out of bed so that we could go see Berlin's most infamous landmark. Axel stayed in bed on the edge of death with one hell of a Kater.

The Berlin Wall separated West Berlin from the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) for more than 25 years. Basically, after World War II, West Germany developed into a capitalist country and experienced a period of economic growth and improving conditions, whereas East Germany developed an authoritarian government and a soviet-style planned economy. Because of this, many East Germans wanted to move to West Germany. This was an "intolerable" situation for Stalin. So, he decided to have the inner-border between the two German states closed, and a barbed-wire fence was erected.

Eventually, a fence became The Wall. The top of The Berlin Wall was lined with a smooth pipe, to make it harder to climb. It was reinforced by fencing, barbed-wire, anti-vehicle trenches, bunkers, dogs, and over 116 watchtowers. I can't even imagine what it must have been like. If you had a job or family members on the other side, you were completely cut-off from them. Although there were rules that allowed West Germans, and eventually West Berliners to apply to cross into East Germany, East Germans and East Berliners didn't have those rights. Initially, they weren't allowed to cross at all. Years later, a few exceptions were made but even if you applied for one of those reasons there were no guarantees.

Long story short (please research the long version... it's an important part of 20th century history), in 1989 a series of events happened that led to the fall of The Berlin Wall. In September, mass protests and demonstrations began in East Germany. On October 18, 1989 longtime East German leader Enrich Honecker resigned and was replaced by Egon Krenz. Tons of East German refugees had found their way into West Germany through Czechoslovakia and this was tolerated by the Krenz government. On November 9, it was decided to allow refugees to pass directly through crossing points between East and West Germany. Later that day, they modified the proposal to allow private travel. The announcement was made by the East German Minister of Propaganda and broadcast on television. The changes were to take effect the next day so that they had time to inform the border guards, but the Minister had been on vacation and wasn't fully briefed of the situation. So, when he was asked by reporters when these changes were to be imposed he said, "As far as I know, effective immediately, without delay."

Tens of thousands of East Berliners started showing up at border crossings demanding to be allowed to pass. The guards had no idea what was going on and made hectic phonecalls to their superiors. Nobody in the East German government wanted to take responsibility for ordering the use of lethal force, so in the face of being wildly outnumbered the guards gave way. East Berliners were met on the other side by West Berliners in celebration! It must have been a beautiful and very emotional sight!

In the weeks and months that followed more border crossings were opened and citizens started breaking off pieces of the wall with sledgehammers. On June 13, 1990 the official dismantling of The Wall by the East German Military began which led to German reunification on October 3. Small sections of The Wall were left up as memorials. Today those sections are covered in murals by artists from around the world, known as The East Side Gallery, and a ton of graffiti.






There are many lessons to be learned. There are still many walls to break down.

B is for Bratwurst

I've always wanted to wake up and find a beautiful woman in the kitchen, making me breakfast wearing nothing but a cute pair of cotton hipster panties and maybe one of my t-shirts.

On day two in Germany, I awoke in Sandy's living room and saw her standing in the kitchen, buttering my bread and scrambling my eggs.  She had prepared a classic German breakfast for us to enjoy, complete with a brilliant selection or meat, cheese, fruit, eggs and of course rolls (Germans LOVE their rolls).  It was absolutely delicious and a brilliant change from my usual stale bagel and generic-brand cream cheese.  It was only the start of my first full day in Germany and I was already in love with German beer and German food.  After refueling, I showered up and we set out to conquer Leipzig in a day.

We walked through a beautiful park, past the Leipzig Zoo and into the city centre.  We took some snapshots along the way and Sandy proved to be the perfect tour guide, answering all of my questions and offering a lot of personal insight.  Sandy is from East Germany and was about 7 years old when The Wall came down so she remembers what life was like before the fall.  I was absolutely fascinated to hear a first hand account about such an important time in history and amazed to learn some of the realities of living in a socialist/communist state.  It is incredible to see how far Eastern Germany has progressed in such a short time.

While we were strolling through downtown I saw a man who looked very familiar.  "Sandy," I whispered, "Is that who I think it is?"  She confirmed that it absolutely was and I have to admit I got a little excited.  I don't get star-struck very often, but when I saw this big-time German celebrity hanging out in the street, I had to take a photo!

After walking around for a couple of hours my stomach started speaking to me.  Surprisingly, in German.  It was saying, "Nur deutsche Lebensmittel zufrieden stellen wird mir jetzt!" I had "the hunger"- and only authentic German cuisine could satisfy me.  We stopped at the nearest pretzel shop and I indulged my urges.  

I savoured my salty snack, then Sandy and I hopped on a scenic bus-tour of Leipzig.  We zig-zagged through the streets while our informative, and somewhat manic, tour guide described the historical significance of the buildings we passed in Germanglish (her unique cross between German and English).  At the halfway point, we pulled over and were allowed to dismount the steel horse so that we could get a better look at Völkerschlachtdenkmal (English: The Battle of the Nations Monument).  The monument stands 91m high, making it Europe's biggest, and commemorates one of Napoleon's most decisive defeats in 1813.  The Battle of the Nations was the biggest battle in Europe before World War I and had Germans fighting on both sides.  The statues that surround the top of the monument are meant to represent Germanic heroism, and the whole idea of the monument is that a nation should be united, rather than split into parts that are forced to fight against each other as they were in this battle.  Adolph Hitler twisted and exploited this meaning and gave several speeches from the monument when in Leipzig.

Standing on the same ground where Napoleon fought and Hitler spoke made this the most historically significant place I have ever been.  It's hard to describe the feeling that I had while standing on such infamous ground... it was without a doubt eerie, but it was mixed with a sense of relief.

The last stop on the tour was Thomaskirche, or, St. Thomas Church.  This beautiful church is where Johann Sebastian Bach worked as a cantor for over 25 years until his death.  He played the organ, instructed the choir, taught Latin and composed much of his work during his time in Leipzig.  Bach is honoured with a statue outside the church and his remains are buried beneath the altar.

After the tour, my tummy was making noises again but only half as loud as Sandy's (seriously, it's like she has a rabid dog in her stomach).  Clearly, we were both in need of some German street meat!!!  We found the nearest vendor and ordered up a couple of mouth-watering Bratwursts.  I took my first bite and was in flavour country.  I savoured every morsel of my delicious, piping-hot meat tube and thought to myself, "Germany, I think I might be falling in love with you."

Later on that evening, back at the apartment we decided that tonight was Sandy and Jozef night; some quality time, just the two of us.  Sandy prepared a famous East German gourmet meal called "Student Sauce" for dinner.  Sounds classy doesn't it?  Well, it is!  It's luxurious ingredients include tomato ketchup, cut-up hot dogs and onion... and it was DAMN good!!!  I washed down my Student Sauce with a few Ur Krostitzers (Mmmm beer) and Sandy pounded back a bottle of wine.  With a nice little buzz on we decided to go out for a few drinks.  We had a few at a place called Barcelona and then a few more at a theatre bar called Pilot, for good measure.  Eventually, we stumbled back to Sandy's home and raced up the spiraling staircase of doom.  Sandy claims to have won this athletic contest.  I don't remember the result so we'll just have to assume she cheated.

It was another perfect day in Germany... tomorrow, Berlin!

A is for Arschloch

The alphabet has been good to me:

I've been reading and writing for most of my life.  I've received nourishment from the alphabet in both cereal AND soup form.  One of my favourite television programs growing up, Sesame Street, was almost always brought to me by particular letters of the alphabet.  And on September 25th, 2003, thanks to the endless cosmic-wonder of the alphabet I met a beautiful, young Fräulein named Sandy.  It was Disney contract signing day and we were asked to sit alphabetically by surname.  Jozef KURACINA (that's me!) took a seat next to Sandy KÜHN.

I introduced myself and told her I was from Canada.  She did the same and informed me that she was from Germany.  We got along really well and it turned out that Sandy was housemates with a Canadian girl named Maureen Poon who quickly became one of my best friends in Florida.  Sandy and I had a pretty good friendship too and after our days in the Disney bubble were over we kept in close touch and always talked lightly about seeing each other again one day.  When I decided I was moving to Europe, Sandy was one of the first people I told and we both agreed that I would have to visit Germany right away.  On November 12th that day finally came!  I flew into Altenburg Airport and boarded a coach to Leipzig; the City of Sandy!  We reached our destination and as soon as the bus door opened I dove off the coach, skipping the time consuming use of stairs, flung my bag off to the side and flew into Sandy's arms.

We bought three tickets for the streetcar-- one for me, one for Sandy and one for Sandy's bike-- then headed to Sandy's home.  After climbing somewhere between two and three hundred stairs (spiral stairs!) we made it to the one-bedroom apartment, panting, sweating and feeling a little lightheaded from the altitude.  The apartment is AMAZING!  Wood flooring, white walls with a little bit of colour trim, enough plant-life to make the place feel homey but not jungle-y, and lots of space.  The bathroom has a standup shower with doors that slide together at the corner, which was something I'd never seen before, but that wasn't the most unique thing in Sandy's water closet:

Now, I've seen a few different flushers in my time.  There's the classic handle on the tank that I think we're all familiar with.  I've also seen metal levers, circular buttons on the top of the tank, circular buttons in the wall and automatic flushers.  Sandy has none of these.  Sandy has a box on the wall a couple of feet above the back of the toilet and to flush the toilet you tilt the box.  I must have stood there for a good two or three minutes the first time, trying to figure out how to make the yellow-tinged water go away.  Picture me,  feeling both hands along the wall, trying to find a secret tile that would send my pee down the pipes before realizing that what I thought was the best-placed ventilation fan I've ever seen was actually the flush mechanism.  I think this has been more than an appropriate amount of time to spend writing about flushing a toilet, so let's move on...

After getting a little settled and replenishing the fluids I lost coming up, we set back out for the city. (To a degree, it is much easier to descend hundreds of spiraling stairs but the dizzying effect still exists.) I immediately took a strong liking to the look and feel of Leipzig.  For one thing, there was SPACE-- something I have missed dearly during my time in the confining United Kingdom--  and just about everything looks like it has some history to it which makes even the ugly buildings seem kind of cool.  We wandered around town and in between taking photographs I bombarded Sandy with any question that popped into my head (something she was going to have to get use to).  When we approached our first major street crossing I met a man that would come to be a major part of my German experience... AMPELMÄNNCHEN!!!  He is the little green man that helped me cross the streets of Leipzig safely.  Now, before you start imagining that Germany uses leprechauns for crossing guards, here is a picture of Ampelmännchen:

I took an immediate liking to the little traffic light man and Sandy explained to me that he could only be found in East Germany.  After the Berlin Wall came down they talked about getting rid of Ampelmännchen and replacing him with the standard, boring, "it's-okay-to-walk" man.  But people had grown fond of their little, hatted hero and thanks to public support he still watches over the street-safety of Eastern Germany.

On our way back home we stopped at a little corner-market with doors that open and close the same way Sandy's shower does.  Sandy selected a bottle of "Weißwein" (white wine... you might have figured that out) and I drooled over the selection of "Bier" (beer... how have you made it to this point of the blog if you didn't figure that out?).  It was glorious!  So many delicious looking beers that I had never seen before, like Radeberger, Weltenburger, Ur-Krostitzer, Reudnitzer and many, many more with names that end in "-ger" or "-zer".  In Germany, you don't have to buy an entire case of just one brand;  there are thick plastic crates that you can fill with whatever you want!  I'm sure a lot of people just take a crate of their preferred brew, but I saw this as an opportunity to try many-a-German-beer, so I mix-and-matched my own variety pack.  Not only that, but each bottle is a half-litre!!!  Just as I thought I had rounded out my selection, one more bottle caught my eye.  The very last Altenburger on the shelf...

Yep... they've got naked chicks on their beer.  She would be mine, oh yes, she would be mine.

I paid for my wobbly-pops IN EUROS (that's legal European tender!) and we made our way home.  When we were back inside the entrance-hall of Sandy's building I stopped dead in my tracks, looked down at the crate of twelve half-litre bottles of beer in my hand, then up at the ominous corkscrewing set of steps before me.  Approximately twenty-six minutes and one pee-break later I was back in front of Sandy's apartment door wheezing more than an asthmatic chain-smoker with a chest cold.

We ordered pizza for dinner and decided to watch Beerfest while we ate.  Those of you who know me well will know that Beerfest is pretty much my favourite comedy of all-time.  Those of you who have seen Beerfest will know that it takes the PISS out of Germans.  Sandy had never heard of Beerfest but I have always wanted to watch this movie with someone from Germany so I was very, very excited when she agreed.  I wondered what a native German would think of the ridiculously exagerrated accents, the grossly inaccurate portrayal of modern German fashion and lifestyle, and the perpetuation of German stereotypes.  Canadians enjoy self-deprecating humor and are great at laughing at themselves but not everyone is (Americans, for example).  So, would Sandy find it funny or insulting?  Well, she LOVED it!!!  We were laughing until mozzerella came out our noses!  I tell ya, it doesn't get any better than having a beer and a slice while watching Beerfest with Sandy.

After dinner, some of Sandy's friends came over and the beer caps started to pop off more rapidly.  I introduced myself to each of them as they arrived by saying, "Ich bin Jozef.  Ich bin kein Americana.  Aus Kanada!" (I'm Jozef.  I'm not American.  I'm from Canada!)  They usually laughed in return and said something in German to Sandy.  When people are speaking another language it's a little harder to tell if they are laughing with you or at you, so I would smile along and take another swig of Steinenürlochmargerlitzer, or something like that, and sit back down.  Some of Sandy's friends were a little shy about their English-speaking skills so until the liquid confidence kicked in I had to sit quietly while they conversed in their native tongue at lightning speeds.  You might think that would be a little boring but I thought it was incredible!  I adore languages so it was a very stimulating environment for me.  I sat there and listened intently to conversations I couldn't interpret trying to catch the odd word that flew by.

A little later on I met one of Sandy's friends who is studying to be a French teacher.  I turned on my Français compétences and this time I got to be part of a conversation that no one else could understand.  We had a nice little chat in French and then I met Geli.  Geli was after my heart right from the beginning.  She is beautiful, exotic-looking and Germany's biggest Ben Harper fan.  Her and I talked excitedly about the man and the music for ages.  We swapped stories, talked about our favourite songs, and I told Geli about Ben's new band Relentless 7 and their debut album due in the spring.  Eventually, it was starting to get late and a few of us were a little more hammered than we intended to be so we called it a night.

It was an absolutely PERFECT first day in Germany and it ended with me passing out on the couch.  I wouldn't have had it any other way.